Team Members

Dr. Julia Sacher is a professor of Cognitive Neuroendocrinology with the Medical Faculty of the University Clinic of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Human Brain Sciences. She is also the director of the Leipzig Center of Female Health & Gender Medicine, and a faculty member of the Max Planck School of Cognition (https://cognition.maxplanckschools.org/en), the International Max Planck Research School of Cognitive Neuroimaging, and the Berlin School of Mind & Brain.

Dr. Sacher is a psychiatrist and a neuroscientist by training. Her MD-degree and her PhD in neuroscience (Medical University Vienna, Austria) were followed by a postdoctoral clinical and research fellowship at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health (CAMH), University of Toronto, research stays at University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University (funded by the NIH), and CDI (Career Development Institute for Mental Health Research) training at the University of Pittsburgh and Stanford University, funded by the NIH. Dr. Sacher is a distinguished university scholar and has held several prestigious Awards and Fellowships, such as the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, the Brain and Behavior Young Investigator Award (2x), the CINP Rafaelsen Award, and the Branco Weiss Fellowship at the Society in Science (ETH, Zurich). She is a full member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmaoclogy (ACNP) and serves on advisory boards, editorial boards, and peer review panels internationally and nationally, including CAMH’s Womenmind Seed Funding Competition. Dr. Sacher drives initiatives in women's health research by advocating precision-imaging for hormonal transitions like the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause, and encourages the integration of sex and gender-based analyses in neuroscience to uplift mental health for both women and men.

holds an M.A. in Information Design and Media Management and brings extensive experience from previous roles as a journalist, PR manager, and group leader. As lab manager of the Cognitive Neuroendocrinology Group, Georgia Dressler oversees the coordination of the research team and manages administrative processes to ensure smooth day-to-day operations. With a strong background in communication and organizational strategy, she supports the group’s scientific mission by bridging research and logistics. more

completed her B.Sc and M.Sc. in Experimental Psychology at KU Leuven (Belgium), where she also obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences in 2020. Her previous research focused on the neural substrates of cardiac autonomic responding and brain-heart interactions, both in healthy individuals and in individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. She is supported by a Marie-Sklodowska Curie postdoctoral fellowship to investigate how cardiac interoception and/or cardiac heart-to-brain signalling vary with sex, menstrual cycle phase and hormonal contraceptive use

is a doctoral candidate with a background in Psychology and Cognitive-affective Neuroscience, who is part of the Max Planck School of Cognition. In her PhD research, she aims to use MRI data to investigate structural and functional changes in the brain along the healthy menstrual cycle, with a particular interest in the hippocampus. She is also interested in the role of sex hormones on cognition, affect, and neuroimaging parameters in clinical populations. She hopes that her work will contribute to the recognition of sex hormones as variables of interest in neuroscience, allowing for less biased health care.

completed her B.Sc. in Psychology, followed by an M.Sc. in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at Maastricht University, and is currently a PhD candidate at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Her doctoral research focuses on stress markers and the immune system across the menstrual cycle in healthy individuals and in patients with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Additionally, Kim is starting a project examining how psychosocial stress interacts with empathic ability in naturally cycling females, females using oral contraceptives, and males.

trained in Neuroscience and a fast-track doctoral student through Max Planck School of Cognition, she explores the influence of sex, gender, and ovarian hormones on the brain, behavior, and mind-brain-body interactions through the spectrum of health. During her PhD, she will take an integrated approach including work with sex hormones on brain function and health outcomes, effect of endogenous ovarian hormones on interoception, and stress on autonomic function. Her work is driven by a commitment to advancing a contextualized understanding of gender/sex and furthering not only accessibility of women’s and gender-diverse health knowledge, but also actively create connections between research, clinical practice, and lived-experience/public agency.